Rider at the Gate

by C. J. Cherryh

and running on nervous energy by now—while his was flagging. Hell, he thought, maybe he and Jonas were crazy as the horses.

  God knew if Aby and Jonas had had anything going between them. He couldn’t imagine it. But maybe there was that in the ambient. He’d not picked it up.

  He wouldn’t be offended—he didn’t think he was. Jonas was potentially more serious than Aby’s occasional others.

  But—no. He didn’t think so. Not Jonas. For the damn-all major thing—Jonas wouldn’t do it. He wouldn’t put himself that close and that off-guard to Aby’s questions.

  A wally-boo called. He took it for reassurance. He had the rifle slung to his shoulders, his hands stuffed into his pockets. He took one out, in the wicked gust of snow-laden wind down a fold of the mountain, to pull his breath-sodden scarf up around his nose. It was freezing with the moisture of his breath and sagging down to his mouth. He jerked it behind his head, tugged it down tight inside his collar, thinking about that sweater he could have bought in Anveney—thinking about frostbite, and asking himself whether the oil on his boots was holding out.

  Maybe some sense of obligation had actually gotten to Jonas, Aby having paid her life for it.

  Or maybe—maybe Cassivey had talked to more than one man, made a deal with more than one man regarding that cargo.

  Damn.

  Damn!

  That distracting notion took the trail-sense out of his legs. His foot wobbled into a hidden hole. He recovered himself a few steps, but he’d hurt the sore leg. The cold had clearly gotten to his brain. He was frozen between the consideration that maybe he ought to go back and find out what Jonas wanted—and the equally valid thought that that had been no signaling shot that had blasted bark off a tree. Jonas hadn’t fired at him when he’d chased him…

  Burn swung his head around and bit him above the knee, not hard, but enough to wake him up. Burn insisted.

  Wasn’t fair. Wasn’t fair to weight Burn down. he thought: the shelter couldn’t be far. He’d cut across the mountain where a horse could go and a truck couldn’t, and he didn’t know how much time he’d taken off the trek, but he had to be far closer now to the next way-stop than he was to go back to the village.

  Didn’t dare to do it again, how-so-ever. Shaky legs had no business on a mountain. Damn near killed themselves doing it once.

  And there was a chance of coming down to the road a second time some distance past the shelter. A chance, if the storm worsened, of freezing to death on the mountainside.

  But he was limping. And speed was harder and harder.

  he imaged; and Burn didn’t want to. Burn would carry him carrying it. Burn didn’t like the pack. It tickled.

  He argued, he imaged but Burn, remembering that, just wanted right then.

  Guil insisted. and Burn still wouldn’t.

  He stopped. Burn offered to bite him on the leg again and he offered,
  Burn wasn’t happy, but Burn finally carried it—

  he sent back,

  For a considerable distance further that even dominated in Burn’s searching the scents the storm brought. But was what Burn smelled. once. The ambient was healthier where they were.

  But night was also coming down fast. The sunglow was leaving the sky behind the mountain wall. The temperature was dropping fast and the wind had a shriller voice as it howled among the evergreens.

  Burn imaged.

  But a high-country shelter was, Guil swore, going to be there— ransacked like the last one or whole, he didn’t care, as long as it was whole walls, a door that would latch, and a supply of wood.

  Jonas would probably be after them; Jonas could show once the weather cleared and they’d talk and have some answers.

  They’d talk with him behind a wall with a gun-port and Jonas out in the yard telling him what the deal was with Cassivey, that was how they’d talk.

  But he had to get there. Had to get there. Legs had to last. Lungs had to last.

  As the light dimmed and dimmed, until they were walking in a murk defined by tree-shadow and the ghostly white of the clear-cut.

  There was ham, there was yeast bread. Danny knew how to make it, and nobody else claimed the knack. He hoped Harper could smell it out there on the wind and Harper was real, real hungry.

  He truly, truly hoped Stuart had made it to the next shelter.

  Jonas thought something he couldn’t catch. Luke had another slice of bread.

  “I’ll bet,” Luke said, “that Harper’s pulled back to the north-next shelter.”

  “Could,” Jonas said.

  The boys just ate their supper.

  There wasn’t a sign of Harper, though he thought they all kept an ear to the ambient. He ate his supper without a qualm.

  It was only afterward when he began to think again about and that man vanishing in the jolt the gun made—that he really worried he’d hit Quig.

  He didn’t think he ought to worry. But he did.

  He sat in a warm spot near enough the stove it overheated his knees. He rubbed the warmth of overheated cloth into his hands, and didn’t want to move.

  “You think you did shoot him after all?” Carlo asked, squatting down near him.

  “I don’t know. I could have.”

  Carlo didn’t say anything else about it. Carlo was thinking about his father. About About he couldn’t deal with. Carlo was quiet, and Randy came up and sat down by him, all of them scared. The banging went on down the street, where the wind hadn’t yet hammered whatever-it-was to flinders.

  “When the snow stops,” Carlo said, “are they going to go after this Stuart guy again?”

  “Probably.” He rubbed his knees again. The heat was back. It was almost too uncomfortable.

  “What happens to you,” Carlo asked then, careful around his edges, “—if you go with a rogue and they shoot it?”

  “Dunno. I really don’t.”

  “Do they know?” A slide of Carlo’s eyes toward Jonas and the others. “I mean—”

  Cloud moved in, put his head on Danny’s shoulder, and Danny scratched Cloud’s chin without thinking about it.

  “Yeah,” Danny said. was insistent in the air. “It’s not a good time to think about it, all right? I don’t know what happens. Harper isn’t any genius. He just got spooked bad.”

 
  “Go to sleep,” Jonas said, and it was like a bucket of ice water on the ambient. Things just—stopped, the way old Wesson could get your attention.

  But it scared everybody. Cloud had jerked his head up, too, and Cloud was surly, feeling it as

  Jonas got up and walked over to the stove, towering over them, his face and himself half in shadow from the flue pipe.

  “No gain,” Jonas said, “to some questions. She could freeze. She could fall off. Could be she’s sane. Could be she isn’t. But if you get her back she won’t be the same as she was. Plain truth.”

  The air was cold around the fire. Just—cold.

  “She’s thirteen,” Carlo said in a shaky voice. “She’s just thirteen.”

  “Horse can’t count,” Jonas said. “Rogue doesn’t care, mountain doesn’t care. Storm out there doesn’t care. And we won’t know.”

  “Ease off him,” Danny said. “Jonas, it’s their sister, for God’s sake.”

  “No difference.”

  “Maybe riders get dropped
under a damn bush, but village kids come with sisters, Jonas—sisters and brothers and and damned right it matters! You grow up with somebody and you got ’em even if you don’t damn well like ’em!”

 

 

  Didn’t know who that was. Jonas all of a sudden flared up—was just and and they were ; Danny couldn’t make sense of it, but his heart had jumped.

  “Clean up,” Jonas said.

  “The hell. You clean up. I cooked it.”

  Horses were was in the ambient.

  “Hawley,” Jonas said. “You want to pick up the site?”

  “Yeah,” Hawley said, and the air was quieter.

  Carlo had gone tense. Randy was stiff and scared-looking, huddled against him. Danny felt a flutter in his heart and got up from where he was sitting, went over and calmed Cloud down, trying not to think real-time, thinking about

 
 
 

  But papa never got his fingernails clean, never bothered too much because it was back to the shop after supper. Papa worked real hard.

 

  That last was Carlo. It was Randy, too. They’d gotten up. They came over to join him, still but picking up on it, maybe, that when the air went like that in a camp you left things alone, really alone, fast.

  The ambient grew quieter and quieter, as if the whole world was freezing. Even the hardier creatures on the mountain had sought shelter from the storm, and the nightly predators had evidently decided on a night to stay snug in their burrows.

  There was a time you thought you had to give it up and try to tuck in somewhere, and if you didn’t, you somehow kept going. And after you were mind-numb and still walking on that last decision there came a time the body kept working and the brain utterly quit: Guil caught himself walking without looking, a second after he slid on a buried rut and had the bad leg go sideways. Burn just forged ahead.

  The leg could be broken, for all Guil could feel—it was numb from toes to knee, the knees and ankles were going, and Burn, damn him, just kept on plowing through the snow.

  <“Burn!”> he yelled, straining a throat raw with cold, thin air. That started him coughing, and still Burn didn’t stop.

  It was a betrayal he’d never in his life expected. Burn had never left him.

  Females, maybe, delusions of females—only thing that he knew would distract Burn to that extent.

  Then:

  He got up, he slogged ahead in the trail Burn broke for him. He stumbled and he used the rifle for help staying on his feet, but, damn, it was there, it was solid in the dark, he could see it with his own eyes, tears freezing his lashes and his lids half-shut. Burn was a

  Burn agreed, pleased with himself. Burn was already up at the entry to the cabin, nosing the door, having gotten, over a lifetime, damned clever with latches and latch strings.

  “Hell, Burn, you’ll ice it breathing on it, you fool—” He could hardly talk, but he set the rifle against the wall and squeezed up beside Burn, got a grip with stiff, gloved fingers on the latch chain, and pulled.

  The latch lifted. Getting a snowbound door was a matter of kicking the snow clear and the ice clear, getting a grip on the handle and pulling the door so you had a crack to get your hands into.

  Another tug outward and Burn got his jaw into the act, stuck just his chin through the door and started pulling back, working his head in and forcing it wider.

  Outward-opening. Always outward opening, all the shelters. You had a snow door, even a roof trap you could use if the snow piled up and you had to, but outward gave you better protection against spook-bears, who always pushed and dug.

  “Come on, Burn, Burn, give me some room, you fool, it’s still blocked—”

  Ice broke. It moved, and Burn wasn’t taking any nonsense. Burn got a shoulder in, and more ice broke—Burn’s rider’s foot was a narrow miss as Burn shoved his way in with thoughts of and a warning of

  Clean shelter. No vermin. Nothing moved in the dark inside.

  He had an idea how the locals set things up now. He retrieved the rifle, got the door shut—pulled his right-hand glove off with his teeth and put his fingers in his mouth to warm them.

  They hurt, God, they hurt so much tears started in his eyes and added to those frozen to his eyelashes. Burn came and breathed on him, that was some help when the shakes started, enough that he was able to get into his pocket and get the waxed matches.

  He got one lit—the thumbnail still worked, even if he couldn’t feel the thumb.

  Better yet, he was able to hold onto the match as it flared and showed him a cabin like any rider shelter—showed him the mantel, and besides a charred slow-match, a lantern with the wick ready and the chimney set beside it.

  He lit it on one match, blinked the tears from his eyes and felt that one little flame as a blazing warmth in a world gone all to ice and wind.

  The fire was laid and ready. He lit the slow-match from the lantern, lit the fire from the match, and squatted there fanning it with his hat until he was sure beyond a doubt he had it going. The wind was all the while moaning around the eaves like a living thing and thumping down the chimney. He chose to take a little smoke until the fire was strong enough for the snow-dump that sometimes came when you opened the flue—there was almost certainly a snow-shield on the chimney, but when he finally pulled the chain, he still got ice. It plummeted onto the logs, hissed, and knocked some of the inner structure flat.

  It didn’t kill the fire, only flung out a white dusting of ash. He stayed there in the warmth and light with Burn going about sniffing this and that—he pulled off his left glove and checked his fingers over for frostbite—felt over his face and his ears, which were starting to hurt, with fingers possibly in worse condition.

  But he wasn’t the only one cold and miserable. He put his fire-warmed gloves back on, wincing with the pain, wrapped a scarf around his head and, taking a wooden pail from the corner, cracked the door to get snow from outside, packed it down with his fists and came back to the fire to melt it. While he waited for that, he delved into the two-pack and got out the strong-smelling salve that by some miracle or its pungent content wasn’t frozen solid.

  Burn was amenable to a rub-down, even if it took precedence over bacon, and Guil peeled out of his coat, called Burn over near the fire and rubbed on salve barehanded, chafed and rubbed until he’d broken a sweat himself, despite the cold walls and floor.

  Burn was certainly more comfortable. Both of them were warmer. He thought his fingers might survive. He pulled off his boots and the cold socks, and applied the stinging salve to his feet, relieved to find the boots hadn’t soaked through, that feeling was coming back, at least an awareness of his feet, and a keen pain above the ankles. He wasn’t altogether sure he hadn’t gotten frostbite. Couldn’t tell, yet. And the toes wouldn’t move. Couldn’t afford to go through life with unsound feet. God, oh, God, he couldn’t—limping along on the short routes where the horse could do all the walking.

  He didn’t want that for a future. He was more worried about his feet than about gunfire—so anxious that Burn in all sympathy came over and breathed on his feet, licked them, once, but the salve tasted too bad.

  He’d have been safer and smarter, he thought now, to have camped in the open. He’d have been warmer sooner. A blizzard like this could
pile up snow in drifts high as a shelter roof—it might not let up with morning or even next evening. The wind screamed across the roof—there was a loose shingle up there or a flashing or something that wailed a single rising and falling note on the gusts, a note you either ignored or let drive you crazy; but he was so glad of warm shelter tonight he told himself it was music.

  Burn made another try at his feet. Burn was half-frozen and had a fearsome empty spot inside.

  “Hell,” Guil moaned, and crawled over, stretched out an arm as far as he could reach and dragged the pack up close—fed Burn and himself jerky and a couple of sticky grain sweets, the kind he kept for moments like this, except his mouth and Burn’s had been too dry too long out there, and Burn’s throat was too raw, his tongue too dry to enjoy it.

  But maybe, maybe there was a little bit of feeling in his feet. He tried moving his toes. Couldn’t quite get all of them to work, but some did that hadn’t—and finally, finally, he got movement out of them all.

  Guil sighed then, with vast relief—took a pan out, thinking of other comforts, took his knife to thoroughly frozen bacon, having to lean on the blade to get through it.

  There was water, finally. There was oil for biscuits—Burn got the bacon squares; he nipped a couple for himself.

  By then his feet and hands had begun to hurt. Really hurt.

  But the toes wiggled quite nicely, and he sat there content to watch that painful miracle while the biscuits nearly burned.

  Meanwhile Burn, with water to drink and with the ambient a lot less and had his head blissfully in the grain bin, fending for himself in the absence of more bacon.

  Guil thought, and offered Burn the first biscuits out of the pan.

  They disappeared without hesitation. He made more, got one for himself out of the next pan. Burn got six. He found he hadn’t as much appetite as he had thought—but before he lay down he stood up, hobbled painfully over to the door and pulled the latch-cord in to protect their sleep.